Where have all the music pirates gone?

Of the 10,000 most popular files on a popular BitTorrent tracker, only 290 …

Remember when music was cool? Back in the days of Napster, it was music that defined file-sharing; millions of people raced to listen to the most obscure artists found in the libraries of friends and strangers. But that was back when music came on CD, was sold only by the album, and was a chore to rip to computers and (gasp!) transfer to the new MP3 players.

Now, with iTunes ascendant, DRM vanquished, the album disaggregated, and Pandora and Spotify available on smartphones, it's almost more trouble than it's worth to share music online unless you happen to be the world's biggest cheapskate (and/or a college student).

All of which may explain why a new, rightsholder-funded study of P2P file-sharing shows music being traded far less than films, pornography, TV shows, video games, and computer software. Piracy isn't a problem that industries like to have, but at least it suggests high interest in one's product. When it comes to the 10,000 most popular files being shared online, however, music can only manage to beat out e-books in popularity.

I want my MTV Hollywood blockbusters

When a TV/movie company like NBC Universal funds a P2P study from a company that specializes in antipiracy work, the end result is hardly a disinterested piece of data. But Envisional's recent P2P study (PDF) did contain a nugget that caught our attention: the relative popularity of content.

Envisional's researchers looked through the 10,000 most popular files being managed by the PublicBT BitTorrent tracker and broke it down by type. Pornography was, err, on top, with films coming next in popularity. Music sits way down the list.

The percentage obviously depends on just where you place your cutoff. The Pirate Bay's overall top 100, for instance, has 10 recent albums in its list (the rest is almost exclusively video content). Still, the disparity in the numbers are eye-popping; pirates want movies more than music, and by a significant margin.